


you painted me golden

by antithestral



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-26 13:18:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19006579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antithestral/pseuds/antithestral
Summary: [ABANDONED] Touching your soulmate leaves temporary color-marks on their skin, which is great, Tony thinks, really smart, and surprisingly efficient for a wet science, except Tony spends half his waking hours encased in a suit of titanium-gold alloy, and Steve wearsglovesto work.





	you painted me golden

**Author's Note:**

> EDIT as of March 18, 2020: this work is incomplete, and has been abandoned. beware, all ye who enter.

The real reason the US Army designed the original uniform with gloves was because they were fighting a god damned war, and the American military did not believe in leaving a damn thing to chance--especially not as valuable a commodity as Captain America.

What if, an enterprising young sergeant had posited in the quartermaster's office, after the 101st had been saved and the decision had been made to deploy the Captain and the Commandos, Captain America's soulmate turned out to be a Russian? What if she was a foreign whore he met in Paris? What if she was an informer? What if she was a Nazi?

All the rest of the room had gone pale, and the uniform specialist with the sketchbook in his lap had promptly gone ahead and sketched on a pair of gloves. The order had gone out for half a thousand identical pieces to a manufacturing unit out in Manchester, machine cut and hand sewn, supple brown leather, with grips sewn in for the shield, as durable as a tank.

Steve Rogers had put them on a week later, a mile behind the frontlines, drilled with the shield for a couple hours (Peggy watched, because Steve was wearing only an undershirt) ((Howard also watched, because that was his bloody shield)), and pronounced them good to go.

Everyone heaved a sigh of relief.

* * *

The first time Peggy touched Steve after the… after the thing with the serum, just before Dr. Erskine was murdered, her fingertips brushing his chest, he had glanced down, for the bare half second. Some corner of his mind, the part that wasn't blitzed with how strange his everything felt, that part, that small pathetic part of him said, maybe, and please, her, please, and then he had looked down and seen— his skin, reddened from the vita ray exposure, rippling with muscles he’d never had before, and— unmarked. Bare.

Oh, he had thought, with that shock of hurt that came from taking an unexpected punch to the gut. Steve knew exactly what that felt like. He hadn't expected it here, now, but it came anyway. Oh, and then, no. Of course it isn't you.

The universe wouldn't be cruel enough to let a stunner like Peggy end up with a fella like Steve. That was just plain common sense.

* * *

Tony's parents had been soulmates.

He remembered the trails of blue his father had left on Maria Stark’s hands, iridescent lines of cobalt and cerulean against the golden tan of her skin, the glimmer of them like bluefin scales. He remembered giggling madly, when he was very, very little, when his parents would kiss and their lips would come away smeared dark navy. Howard used to grin unrepentantly, back then, still punch-drunk on new love, and Maria would blush and touch her fingertips to her mouth and roll her eyes at the both of them.

He remembered growing older, and seeing the blue slowly drift out of their lives, see his parents slip further apart, never mind that they were soulmates. He watched his father’s eyes turn hard, and his mother’s smiles turn brittle, and the blue of his childhood had never returned, except in odd, fleeting moments, there and gone again, a ghost in every silent room.

He remembered feeling helpless, and confused, and angry, although he was never sure at whom. He remembered hating the idea of soulmates.

* * *

  
Steve thought he met his soulmate once.

It was a summer day, in New York City, and he had only just turned nine. The stock exchange had just crashed, the Empire State was just an empty building lot on Fifth Avenue, and Steve was getting into a bad habit of getting into fights, and getting his keister handed to him in back alleys all down 34th Street.

Tommy Coltrane was having a go at it, that day, and Steve's lip was bloody and his ribs ached, and he was down already, but Tommy was in one heck of a mood and he would. Not. Stop. Maybe it was the heat, Steve thought deliriously, lying on the warm, sticky pavement, as Tommy yelled and aimed a particularly vicious kick into his shins, curled over the soft vulnerable parts of his gut. The city smelled like dead goats frying inside a hairy armpit, and that was if you didn’t count the stink rising off the Hudson. Maybe it had driven Tommy right round the bend.

And then he’d heard something like a shout, and a thunk, and Tommy's dark head had dropped to the ground and into steve’s line of sight. Suddenly, there were warm hands touching his face, and Steve had gasped, a feeling like lightning in his chest, had grabbed those hands and for a second— for a second, he had seen it, a flash of color, vivid, super-saturated red. And then it was gone, and there were brown eyes looking at him, concerned, and there was a boy with a funny smile, saying, “You sure know how to pick ‘em, pal,” and then, “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up. You like ice-cream?”

Steve loved ice-cream.  
And as it turned out, he could do with a best friend too.

* * *

  
Rhodey always pretended like it had never happened, which Tony figured was just about the nicest thing you could do for anyone.

It had been his last year at MIT, freshly legal for everything but alcohol, but Tony had never let that get in his way. His nineteenth was a ripper of a party, the eighties in all their psychedelic glory. Silicon Valley was a messianic beacon in the distance, phreaking was still a thing, and everyone agreed spandex was the textile of the future.

And Tony was so, so drunk.

“I am so, so drunk,” Tony mumbled into Rhodey’s shoulder.

“Yes you are,” he agreed, half-carrying, half-dragging Tony through the pigsty mess of his room, to the single bed in the corner, covered in more stuff. He emptied the bed by virtue of heaving the covers off in a hard pull, and poured Tony into the sheets. “I told you not to do that last shot. You need to listen to me, kid.”

“M’smarter th’n you,” Tony slurred, eyes half-closed.

Rhodey tucked the sheets around him. “And I'm older than you. And I got a gun.”

“You won’ shoot me.” His eyes opened just a little, and he smirked messily. “You liiiiiiike me.”

Rhodey sighed. “Unfortunately.” He straightened up, and like a shot, Tony's hand clamped over his wrist. “Tony?”

“Can you stay?”

His lips thinned out. “Tony.”

“Not like that. Just. I don’t want to be… Don't go.”

Rhodey sighed. The kid had had enough shit dumped on him this year, hadn’t he? Dead parents, and a carnivorous board of directors, every paparazzo with camcorder after his life, and every girl with an empty bank account too. Rhodey didn’t want to be another thing, that hurt Tony. Didn't want…

Well, anyway. He sat. Right on the edge of the bed, Tony's hand still on his wrist.

“Thanks,” Tony said quietly.

“No problem.” The room felt too quiet.

Tony slid his hand up, staring at the bare patch of skin left behind. His thumb rubbed gently there, for a second, before pulling away.

“What's up?” Rhodey asked.

“I don’t want a soulmate,” Tony said hoarsely.

“I know, buddy.”

“But I wish it was you,” he said, all in a rush, desperately. “If it had to be-- I wish-- I-- Rhodey--” Tony was getting up, hands curled into fists into the quilt.

“Tony,” he breathed, and pressed his palm into that chest, gently shoved the kid back down. He could feel Tony's heart through his ribs, hammering away, too fast for comfort. “Tony, no.”

“I want it to be you, I don’t-- I don’t want to be like my f-- What if I hurt-- I don’t-- Rhodey, please--”

“Oh, kid, no, you wouldn’t,” but when Tony surged up, rhodey had let him, had let tony curl up into his chest, and heave great jerky, terrified breaths into the curve of his shoulder. He felt warm tears soak into his t-shirt, stroked Tony's hair and murmured stupid nothings into the top of that dark head, and felt young and useless and scared. You couldn't hurt anybody. You don't have it in you. That's what Rhodey wanted to say, but he knew Tony wasn't ready to hear it yet.

“I miss him,” Tony had said, that night, the first and only time he ever said it, and Rhodey didn’t even have to ask who he was talking about. “I miss him so much.”

“I know,” Rhodey had replied. “I know, tony.”

Tony had hiccuped himself quiet, let himself be tucked back in, and drifted into sleep. The next day, rhodey had woken him up with doughnuts and coffee, and they had never talked about it again.

But then, some things, you didn’t need to

* * *

Twenty-three years later, Steve woke up, in the wrong century, and Tony met the man he was supposed to love. So of course they hated each other on sight. Of course they did. 

It was a funny thing, hatred. Such a deep, rich emotion, and so much space it took up inside both of them, and never did they stop to consider--one of them a genius, and the other, a master strategist--not once did they stop to consider why a complete stranger took up so much space in the landscape of their mind. 

But that was just the beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! hit kudos if you liked it, and remember to subscribe for updates <3  
> title from taylor swift's 'dancing with our hands tied'  
> find me on tumblr @[ **pasdecoeur**](https://pasdecoeur.tumblr.com/)!


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